Blackberry Rag

Doc Watson came to it by another route. According to the notes for Folkways’ The Watson Family (1963), he heard it on a Del Rio radio station, played by a fiddler he remembered only as “Billy.” The notes suggest the station was XERA, the Mexican border station whose broadcasts once reached across the United States with country music. On that album Watson played it on mandolin, paired with “Texas Gals,” with Ralph Rinzler on guitar. He also played it on guitar with John Herald at Club 47 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 10 February 1963, a performance issued only in 2018. In March 1968 he recorded it again for Vanguard, and it came out that August on Good Deal! Doc Watson in Nashville.

Later recordings include Mick Larie’s Le Mandoline Américaine (1977), Steve Kaufman and Robin Kessinger’s Star of the County Down (1990) and John Lowell and Ben Winship’s Occupational Hazards (2005).